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Location: Hadrian’s Library – Athens, Greece
“What was your favourite place to visit as a child?”
That’s one of my password challenge questions for multifactor authentication at work – which is a sentence I never thought I’d bother to write down, but there is a point to this, I promise. My answer is, “The library.” My obsession with books began early, and it’s never abated. The wonderful thing about growing up is that those things that make you a bit strange as a kid, like an all-encompassing love for words in print and places full of them, ultimately come to make you interesting. I still love libraries. Hadrian’s Library in Athens is no longer a library in the traditional sense, just a magnificent ruin near that looms large across from Monastiraki station. But it was once. And the sense of calm that pervades places full of books, the one I love so much, is still present.
We visited Hadrian’s Library for the first time on our last visit to Athens. It was a last minute addition to our holiday agenda, but turned out to be my favourite part of the trip. My fascination with Hadrian, the man most remembered for his wall who in fact left his mark on cities all over the Roman empire and in particular on Athens, which he loved deeply, is well-documented. From the moment that I stood beneath the remains of his arch and looked up at the Acropolis through it on my first visit to Athens back in 2017, I’ve wondered, who was this man, really? History books describe him as an imperfect ruler and deeply flawed person. Literary works inspired by his life reveal him as an unusual and interesting one. He was a curious and avid traveler, a lover of art and literature, and an ambitious civil reformer.
I imagine that if we ran into each other somewhere, in some imaginary place, maybe a library whose doors suspend the laws of time and chronology, we would have a lot to talk about.
But until I find the rabbit hole I need to walk through to get there, I content myself with visiting the ruins of the places Hadrian built. And his library is my favourite. There are no books, although a sign tells visitors where the room that housed all the scrolls once stood. Today, Hadrian’s Library is little more than elegant piles of carved stones inside a single remaining wall. Inside, a partial staircase, roped off to prevent accidents, leads nowhere. A trio of crumbling columns marks the entryway. They’re still so tall, although no longer their original height, and what remains of their reach is staggering. They give a sense of the grandeur of the place, when it was first constructed.
Like most Roman buildings, Hadrian’s Library didn’t last long in its original condition. Built, or at least completed, in AD 132, it was seriously damaged in an invasion in AD 267, then repaired between 407-412. The Byzantines built three churches on top of it between the fifth and twelfth centuries, the remains of which are still visible. I think that’s what amazes me most. The library was such a visionary project, such an immense undertaking. And Hadrian built it knowing how unlikely it was to last. He did it anyway. I admire that type of determination, the kind that often looks like obstinacy from the outside.
When we returned to Athens this year, the library at the top of my list of places to visit. We went straight there on the morning of our first full day in the city. It was exactly as I remembered it, although the curators rearranged some of the rock piles between my last visit and this one. Bookstores and libraries make the top of my must-visit list in every city, but especially in Athens, and with good reason. There’s no library in the world quite like the one Hadrian built two centuries ago. It’s a remarkable legacy. And one of which I think he would have been truly proud.
